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Third Iowa State University Summer Symposium on Science Communication

May 30 – June 1, 2013; Ames, IA

Submission deadline: January 31, 2013

As science continues to become implicated in personal and collective decision-making, the stakes for communicating science to non-expert audiences intensify. In such an environment, a clear articulation of ethical issues arising from science communication is essential. Unfortunately, such an articulation does not yet exist. The purpose of this symposium is to bring together scholars from across disciplines whose research can contribute toward a theoretical articulation of the ethical issues surrounding the communication of science to non-expert audiences.

A year ago today Judith Curry wrote her first post Climate, Etc. We should all celebrate the fact that her blog is still more than flourishing. She has paid consistent attention to issues of communicating science–of course, that’s likely to warm a communication theorist’s heart. But more importantly she’s been practicing what she’s been preaching. Comment threads on her blog are among the only places where those with various views of climate science actually talk with each other.

Why not look back and consider how Climate, Etc. has managed to construct and maintain a fragile community? What kinds of communication practices are making the site work? At the beginning, Curry aimed for discussions in three different styles. Did that work out? There’s at least one rule that didn’t: limiting comments to 250 words!

We are increasingly dependent on advice from experts in making decisions in our personal, professional, and civic lives. But as our dependence on experts has grown, new media have broken down the institutional barriers between the technical, personal and civic realms, and we are inundated with purported science from all sides. Many share a sense that science has lost its “rightful place” in our deliberations. Grappling with this cluster of problems will require collaboration across disciplines: among rhetorical and communication theorists studying the practices and norms of public discourse, philosophers interested in the informal logic of everyday reasoning and in the theory of deliberative democracy, and science studies scholars examining the intersections between the social worlds of scientists and citizens. For this conference, we invite work on expertise in policy controversies from across the disciplines focused on argumentation, reasoning, rhetoric, communication and deliberation.

What I’m about here.

I'll be using this space to consider what happens when scientists enter what Kenneth Burke called the "barnyard" of our civic controversies. What communication techniques will help scientists maneuver among the piles of, um, fertilizer citizens are throwing at each other? How can they best make arguments, and position themselves in debates? Of course, epic fails are just as interesting.--Jean Goodwin